


The Royal We

by Piinutbutter



Category: StreetPass Quest | Find Mii
Genre: Bonding, Kidnapping, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-04
Updated: 2017-09-04
Packaged: 2018-12-23 17:16:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11994354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Piinutbutter/pseuds/Piinutbutter
Summary: Royal duties can be stressful, and sometimes a king wishes for a little change of pace. Being kidnapped by a ghost is not quite what he had in mind, however.





	The Royal We

**Author's Note:**

  * For [The_Exile](https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Exile/gifts).



Perhaps this was karma. A bit of universal irony, divine retribution for something so ludicrous as a king having the gall to complain about his job. The king adored his kingdom and all its people, he truly did. He would trade his throne for no riches, no land. Nothing could tempt him from his duties.

Except the lure of a long nap at the end of a stressful day. No amount of kingly love could quite erase the very real exhaustion from dealing with monarchical matters day after day. There was simply so much to do! How could one king be expected to handle it all, and still have enough time to compose genius puns with which to entertain his court? Indeed, perhaps the king had muttered a few words of annoyance about his sleepy state before dozing off into a sovereign snooze, but it was still quite a harsh punishment to wake up in an unfamiliar place, freezing cold and locked inside a cage that left him with room enough to do nothing but turn around, if he was careful and tucked his arms against his body.

No, this was quite the cosmic overreaction. Here he was, all alone in a room that seemed designed to elicit fear from its inhabitants - it was dark and gloomy, and if there were walls, he couldn’t see them through the thick miasma of purple mist. He had been king-napped! While sadness, or perhaps panic, would have been a reasonable reaction to his troublesome situation, the king found he suffered most prominently from irritation. Now he would have nothing to do but sit and wait for a group of noble adventurers to rescue him. He had no doubt that they would - what were adventurers for, if not saving their regal ruler in times of peril?

He only hoped they would come for him soon. He’d eaten an early dinner before bed, and he was already getting rather hungry...

After several hours of waiting in lonely silence, and with nothing to occupy his attention, the king managed to doze off, despite the rumblings of his stomach and the rather awkward angle he had to contort his body into to accomplish sleeping inside a birdcage. He woke to quite the frightening sight: A pair of demonic yellow eyes, staring down at him from across the bars of his miniature prison. The eyes, each one as large as the king’s head, were attached to an even more demonic body, that of a frighteningly large ghost. The creature glowed with the same dark purple aura that misted throughout the chamber, and the king scrambled backwards in fear. (Well, in theory he scrambled back in fear. In practice, there wasn’t much ‘backwards’ to scramble in the direction of, so he mostly banged his elbows on the bars of his cage. Which was rather painful, and he would have nursed the sore bones, had the hellish beast in his immediate vicinity not been taking up all of his attention.)

“I suppose you’re the fiend who’s so rudely abducted me?” the king challenged, trying to exude an air of authority despite his disadvantaged state.

To his surprise, the ghost answered, in a low, rumbling voice.

“Technically, my minions were the ones who abducted you.”

Oh, the monster wanted a battle of wits and technicalities, did it? Well, it chose the wrong king to challenge!

“But you sent the order of abduction to them, did you not?” the king replied, adjusting his crown. “In the greater chain of events, you would be the one who caused my abduction and imprisonment in this thoroughly uncomfortable apparatus.” He gripped one of the cage’s bars to emphasize his point, only to draw his hand back in surprise as the ghost turned around. The end of the creature’s tail flicked his cage, sending it rattling and shaking like a particularly frightened leaf in a particularly aggressive wind. The king glared at the ghost as it floated away from him.

Now that the ghost wasn’t taking up most of his field of vision, the king could see how big it truly was. Why, the king was smaller than one of its hands! Perhaps he shouldn’t be sassing it quite so much...it wouldn’t do to put himself in grave danger before his adventurers had even laid out the blueprints for their daring rescue.

“You are brave to talk so brazenly to me, little king,” the ghost said, moving towards an object the king couldn’t quite make out in the mist. “Brave, or perhaps just foolish.”

Well, as long as he was being brave-or-perhaps-just-foolish, it couldn’t hurt to ask for some information about his whereabouts, could it?

“Why did you bring me here?” he demanded of the creature, gripping the cage bars with both hands now that the cage had stopped trembling. “And where am I, anyway?”

The ghost glanced back at him. “You are in a tower,” it answered simply. “And you are needed here. That is all.”

It drifted out of the object - which the king now realized was a door - and out of sight, leaving the king alone once more.

How royally rude.

The king wasn’t sure how many hours had passed when the ghost floated back into the room where he was being held prisoner. Enough for him to start fretting about how his kingdom was getting on without him. Oh, he would have _so_ much work to do once he got back...

The ghost was eerily silent, too. One moment the king was staring into the empty distance, the next moment, that distance wasn’t so empty, and a monster was looming over him.

After getting over his initial shock, the king found his irritation outweighed any fear he had of the monster.

“Have you come to use me for your nefarious, mysterious plan now?” he demanded, adjusting his crown. The thing had a habit of slipping too far to the right.

The ghost shook its head. “Our schedule doesn’t allow for that, at the moment.”

“Your schedule,” the king repeated, incredulous. “The forces of darkness have a schedule.”

“A rather strict one, at that.” The monster made a rumbling noise that was powerful enough to shake the bars of the cage once again. It took the king a moment to realize it was laughter. “We are not as simpleminded as you humans believe.”

The king harrumphed. “Simpleminded, perhaps not. Brutish, absolutely.”

The monster seemed puzzled. “Brutish?”

“Brutish!” the king confirmed, raising his fist for emphasis. “You kidnap me in the middle of a pleasant sleep, squish me into a thoroughly uncomfortable cage, and give me no food or drink whatsoever! Not even a glass of tea to sip on as I contemplate my conundrum. Nothing could be more brutish, I tell you.”

The monster shook its head. It did something to the top of the cage, and a moment later, the king experienced the rather terrifying sensation of being scooped up into a large, monstrous hand.

“This is an outrage!” the king exclaimed in a squeaking voice that was not at all befitting of a man of such high status. “Put me down immediately!” He pounded at the monster’s fingers with weak arms. The ghost stared at him, unperturbed.

“Would you like something to eat, or not?”

The king paused in his struggles, answering sheepishly, “Is this necessary for providing me with sustenance?”

“No,” the ghost said, its inhuman mouth contorting into a smile. “But you complained about the size of your cage as well. I’m deeply sorry for trying to help you.”

Why - why, the creature was mocking him! The king was tempted to resume his protests, but the ghost carried him across the room (jostling him more than strictly necessary, the king was sure). The king’s complains were wiped away when he noticed that a dark corner of the room they had arrived at held a table, which itself held a perfectly acceptable meal for a human. Tea included.

“Will you eat,” the ghost asked, “Or has my appearance ruined your appetite?”

“Not at all,” the king rushed to say. “Unless...you’ve poisoned all this delightful food, haven’t you? You wicked fiend! You malicious-”

The monster sighed. Its body was built in such a way that the king could feel the vibrations of the sound throughout the hand holding him. “If I had a desire to kill you, you would have been dropped from the sky on your ascent to the tower. Now, eat.”

The king squirmed in its grip. “Perhaps I will. If you set me down.”

That rumbling laugh returned. “I’m afraid that isn’t possible, little human. It is my hand or the cage. Take your pick.”

Reluctantly, the king stayed where he was, reaching out wordlessly for a slice of buttered bread.

The meal was not, in fact, poisoned, as once the king had been dropped back into his cage (under plenty of protest), he simply sat undisturbed for several more hours. At least his stomach had ceased its nagging.

But now he was left with nothing to sate his boredom, as he was too stressed to even come up with decent new turns of phrase. It was a strange feeling, to experience excitement when his foul kidnapper entered the room again - it meant a distraction, at the very least.

“Your adventurers are making quite the mess of my tower,” the ghost commented, sounding rather weary.

The king perked up. “They’ve come for me? They’re here?”

The ghost made what looked eerily like a shrug. “I wouldn’t get your hopes up for a quick rescue. They’ve run into trouble with many of my underlings. But they are still a nuisance - what I wouldn’t give for a raiding party that wasn’t meowing constantly.”

At a loss of what to inquire, the king asked, “Do you...receive many raiding parties, here?”

“Oh, you wouldn’t believe! Do you know how many amateur treasure hunters have no respect for the places they plunder?” Clearly he had touched upon a sore subject. The ghost paced as it spilled its heart to him, and after nearly ten minutes of ranting, the king had a solid education in the various types of wanderers, warriors, and vagabonds that traipsed through the ghost’s tower on a weekly basis.

“Well...that kind of thing tends to happen, when you kidnap important monarchs,” the king offered, once the ghost had calmed down.

The ghost flicked his cage with a wicked fingernail, and the king almost screamed. Once the shaking had settled, he realized that the monster didn’t actually look angry. More amused.

“You are the first human we’ve kidnapped.” The ghost turned to take its leave. “Perhaps that is why I find you so interesting.”

The monster’s advice regarding a quick rescue turned out to be founded. The king was still stuck in his cage, conspicuously un-rescued, what must have been over a day after the last visit from his kidnapper. But the monster returned, every time he was needed, to provide food and drink. With nothing else to look forward to, the king began to stretch these encounters, asking the ghost about where he was - a tower, which he knew, called Mirage Tower, which he didn’t know - and why he was here. The ghost refused to answer the latter in any clear terms, but it always insisted that it wasn’t after the king’s life.

The king wasn’t sure to handle his incorporeal imprisoner turning the questions back on him. Apparently, the monster was curious about life in the royal court, inside the glimmering walls of human society it was never allowed to glimpse. The king went with his first instinct, which was to paint it as a well of suffering and hard work. If he made it sound as unappealing as possible, then the monster wouldn’t want to attack it and take it for its own, would it?

All he got in response was a smile and an offer. “If I’d known life as a king was so terrible, I would have gotten you out of there sooner.”

 

* * *

 

“What on earth are those adventurers up to?” the king sighed, resting his chin on his arm, which itself was resting on the ghost’s index finger. Being held by the thing was surprisingly comfortable, once he got over the underlying sensation of deathly cold and pure evil.

“Figuring out the correct magics to use against my traps,” the ghost replied, spearing a piece of fruit on its nail and nudging it into the king’s hand.

It...disturbed the king, frankly, how comfortable he had grown with everything about this situation. Not the cage - his feathers were still royally ruffled by the insufficient size of the thing - but how he felt no fear letting the creature that had captured him manhandle him and hand-feed him meals. It was hardly a fitting way for a noble to go about his business, but then, perhaps there lied the problem. It was a novelty, not to have any responsibilities for once. A novelty he was growing to appreciate.

Perhaps when this was all over, he could arrange to be ‘kidnapped’ once again when his duties got to be too much for one monarch. With a properly-sized cage, this time.

The adventurers did come, finally, after a truly unreasonable wait. The king would be more irritated if he hadn’t been spending most of his time the last few days outside of his cage, speaking with the master of the tower. The ghost did have plenty of interesting stories to tell, and it enjoyed hearing about the parts of life it couldn’t experience.

And now the creature had disappeared, vanished into nothingness right in front of his eyes, vanquished at the hands of a handful of feline adventurers. The king greeted them with nothing but gratitude, and indeed, it would be quite the relief to return to his own castle and rule his kingdom once more.

Yet, a part of him couldn’t help wondering if ghosts could truly die.

 

* * *

 

Months later, a letter arrived at the royal palace. It was not delivered in the standard fashion, but instead, appeared mysteriously on the king’s nightstand as he slumbered. There was no outward indication of its sender, but against his better judgment, the king opened it, squinting to make out the elaborate handwriting he was greeted with.

_If, at any time, you would like to be kidnapped at some point in the future, let me know. I’ve bought a bigger cage, this time._


End file.
